More memos? Devin Nunes says House Intelligence is in 'phase two' of investigation

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., suggested that more memos, in addition to the one released Friday that outlines alleged surveillance violations by the U.S. government, may soon be released, with the next one targeting the State Department.

“We are in the middle of what I call ‘phase two’ of our investigation, which involved other departments,” Nunes said. “Specifically the State Department and some of the involvement they had in this.”

Nunes also disclosed that although he had been heavily involved in compiling the memo, he had not seen the FISA application mentioned in the memo due to an agreement with the Justice Department.

"The agreement we made with the Department of Justice was to create a reading room and allow one member and two investigators to review the documents," Nunes said. "I thought the best person on our committee will be the chairman of the Oversight Committee, [Rep. Trey] Gowdy. They would come back with their notes and brief the rest of the committee members."

#BREAKING: Devin Nunes says this is just the first memo to be released. He says there will be another one dealing specifically with the State Department’s role in everything that happened. pic.twitter.com/kpHVDQ44WX&mdash; Ryan Saavedra ???????? (@RealSaavedra) February 3, 2018

Nunes later explained to the Weekly Standard that the process by which these future reports would be released would be through a more traditional route and not by invoking the obscure House Rule 10 again.

"This was phase one. That resulted with a memo designed to go public. There’s not plans of additional classified information that would come forward through the same 11G process. The investigation is ongoing, I’m not sure anything would necessitate that," Nunes said, referring to a clause under House Rule 10. "We will use our standard process for any additional information that needs to be made public. We were forced to use the 11G process because DOJ and FBI wouldn’t investigate themselves.”

Trump allowed the declassification of the memo on Friday, and it was released shortly thereafter. The memo outlined how Justice Department and FBI officials used information from a dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain and renew a surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The dossier was part of opposition research partly funded by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But according to the Republican memo, the FBI and Justice Department did not disclose that information when attempting to renew the warrant.

Democrats have pushed back on this point and have created their own memo in rebuttal, which reportedly asserts that the FBI told the surveillance court when seeking renewal of the surveillance authorization that the agency was no longer in communication with Steele because he was discussing the investigation with reporters, according to the New York Times.

The Democrats memo has yet to be released to the public, though Nunes said he was open to bringing it to a vote in his committee. Democrats have said the Republican document was a “shameful effort” to undermine the Justice Department.

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